Great Places has provided £7,500 funding to an Accrington-based arts and social justice project that operates across Blackburn, Accrington and Nelson.
The funding supports a new programme of activities for women to explore health through relationships with plants and each other.
The funding, from Great Places’ financial resilience fund, will be used to run a series of monthly workshops to introduce medicinal plants through the seasons.
These activities will take place in their newly created Physic Garden which nestles between a terraced street and the Leeds to Liverpool Canal in Nelson.
The Physic Garden was purchased by the community through crowdfunding and landscaping was done entirely by hand by women throughout the pandemic.
Every plant in the Physic Garden – over 130 at the last count- is medicinal, some are familiar sights in Lancashire and some are much less common. Many of the plants are used all over the world to support health.
Through the plants and the seasons, the workshops and conversations held in the garden explore issues that women share, about health, stress, food, recovery, belongings and happiness.
Rachel Anderson, one of the founders, said she was grateful to Great Places for their continued support.
She said: “Great Places has been incredibly supportive in helping us grow and create what have become today.
“The money will go towards us continuing our work and being able to offer more courses we have planned, including a caretaking course, which will train women to take ownership of the garden and also create learning resources to help share what the herbs are and what they do.
“We will be opening the garden up throughout the summer to women in the community and we have other initiatives we are working on but it’s thanks to organisations like Great Places that help us do what we do.”
Visit idle women on Instagram @idle_women or at https://www.idlewomen.org/ for further information.
